Second Darkness
The Rise and Fall of King Daqan After the end of the Locust Swarm and the First Darkness, the realm of Talindon was left shattered, and the Penacor line extinguished. The war had left the baronies divided, with no clear ruler able to sit the throne. Besides, it was clear that many of the barons wished for the throne to remain empty in order to maintain their own independence. As the barons continued bickering over land and resources, Timmorran thought to bring unity to a now tense kingdom by attempting a new form of government inspired by the lands he had visited in his travels. Forging a New Peace With Timmorran's advice, the Lords of Talindon suggested that Baron Daqan accept the Penacor crown. Timmorran argued this to be a suitable transitional step from Penacor rule to the coalition of lords that he envisioned the kingdom to one day become. He persuaded the baron to take the throne, but he also advised him to openly swear that he would have no heirs and would instead install a Council of Barons to govern after him. Due to the weakened authority of the throne following the First Darkness, Daqan was forced to agree. His right to rule would now come directly from the Council of Barons, meaning the lords of the land could be surer that Daqan would hold their interests at heart. The king would reunify the baronies in the interest of security, and facilitate the dividing of the post-war land among the barons so that after his rule, the Council could take power. His coronation was held in 488, and Daqan was soon regarded as a confident and self-assured ruler. The Rescue of Waiqar Shortly after Daqan took the throne, Timmorran assembled an army and traveled deep into the Charg’r Wastes to discover the fate of Waiqar Sumarion. After nearly six months, they came upon the Black Citadel of Llovar and vanquished various horrors that dwelt therein. In a deep oubliette, amongst Llovar’s many prisoners, they discovered the forlorn figure of a once-proud general. Little is known of the details of the rescue of Waiqar, save that when Timmorran returned to Talindon, he urged King Daqan to forbid travel east into the those lands. He gathered every map that depicted the Charg’r Wastes and had them all destroyed. Terrinoth As Daqan organized the rebuilding of the kingdom, many noted that the character of his society was different than that of the Penacor realm. Elves traveled the land openly, assisting in the rehabilitation of rural communities, and Dwarven engineers from Dunwarr directed the mining of rich deposits of iron found in the northern hills. This cosmopolitan flavor, and the increasing authority provided to the Council of Barons (to be known in more recent times as the Council of Thirteen due to its number), led to a new age of optimism and prosperity. King Daqan, perhaps following Timmorran’s instruction, gave a speech in which he declared himself unworthy of the Penacor name and stated that the realm of Talindon ought to pass into history with its rulers. He proposed a new name for the nation: Terrinoth, or “Land of Steel.” The Ru Campaign Waiqar’s recuperation took many months, and the signs of emaciation and neglect never left him. Once confident and brash, the general was now given to sullen moods. Timmorran beseeched him to command the army once again. To the rejoicing of his troops, Waiqar accepted. The general’s taste for recklessness had been wrung from him. He now favored a colder approach to warfare, yet he still managed to win glory for himself. When an Uthuk warlord named Da’Roul Bonesplicer marched from the Wastes, Waiqar commenced the Ru Campaign. He and his troops vanquished Da’Roul, and throughout Ru and the Darklands they annihilated the Uthuk camps. Daqan ordered the building of guard towers along the borders of the forbidden lands so that he could station patrols there to watch for signs of resurgent Uthuk. In the years since, the watchtowers have fallen into disuse, for the Uthuk had been utterly destroyed. Yet, in the hour of his triumph, Waiqar scorned all praise. Instead of reveling in his victories, he complained to his captains of the complacency and arrogance of Timmorran, stating that had the wizard seen fit to augment their military efforts with magic, the lives of many brave soldiers could have been saved. Daqan's Reforms, the Council of Barons, and the Founding of the Free Cities King Daqan never occupied the Penacor keep in its ancestral home of Tamalir. The city's elders had grown strong and fiercely independent following the end of the Penacor line, so they held the city themself. Daqan drafted a charter by which the elders were granted both the keep and governance of the city. Their independence was to be respected by the throne, provided they abide by majority decisions of the Council of Barons, tithed the Council a portion of their taxes, and kept a standing force of soldiers for Tamalir’s own protection and that of the realm. So it was that the greatest of Terrinoth’s cities became the first of the Free Cities. Daqan founded the great citadel of Archaut in a calm southern valley and placed at its center a great hall. At the beginning of every spring, Terrinoth’s barons met there to accept King Daqan’s hospitality and discuss matters of the realm. During one of these discussions, it was decided that Waiqar Sumarion would be elevated to the Council and granted lands in the northwest of Terrinoth, near the Misty Hills and marshes of the Karahesh. Many Sundermen, veterans of Waiqar’s campaigns, settled in his barony, the thirteenth of the realm. Waiqar ruled justly, though he encouraged a militaristic culture and oversaw the training of a legion of warriors. Not everyone was pleased with King Daqan’s reforms. In particular, the Baron Ulon Heronglade held a number of reactionary opinions regarding kingship, and his opposition to Daqan often resulted in heated arguments. Timmorran's Preoccupations Timmorran was often absent during this time, traveling widely throughout the world. He was becoming increasingly absorbed with the need to preserve his teachings and abilities for future generations, and he raised a village that would go on to become a place of learning and study: Greyhaven. While he occasionally met with the barons at Archaut, he seemed preoccupied and soon retreated to the Tower of Meringyr, a tall keep he had ordered built in the remote Wizard’s Vale for the purpose of magical research. The keep was, of course, named in tribute to Timmorran’s old tutor, the great Sal Meringyr, whose ambition to tap the Verto Magica had become Timmorran’s own. The Murder of King Daqan In 513, King Daqan traveled to the southwestern reaches of Terrinoth to arbitrate a dispute between two barons. What had begun as a petty dispute about the borders of their neighboring realms had developed into a series of skirmishes, and King Daqan hoped to settle matters before bloody war broke out. He never arrived, and later, his crowned helmet was discovered near a lonely stretch of road. It seemed that King Daqan’s party had been ambushed and slaughtered on their journey, their remains scattered by wolves. In the cities of Terrinoth, it was whispered that the Bloodguard Knights had been hired to waylay and murder the king by none other than Baron Ulon Heronglade. Led by Waiqar, the Council took resolute action: it had Castle Heronglade razed to the ground and the baron seized. Ulon Heronglade never stopped protesting his innocence, even as he dangled from a cage from the gates of Archaut and slowly starved to death. A New Darkness The death of King Daqan set in motion the Second Darkness. Various people could have benefited from Daqan’s demise, and while official records state that Baron Heronglade was justly found guilty, scholars argue that Waiqar Sumarion may have been the real culprit. After all, he soon used the situation to unleash evil upon Terrinoth. An alternative explanation - one not often suggested in polite company - would be to note that Timmorran also stood to gain much from the death of Daqan. After the regicide, those who had voiced opposition to the Council of Barons wished no association with Baron Heronglade, and they became markedly circumspect regarding political matters. The Council now ruled supreme. Others suggest that, as his body was never recovered, King Daqan may not have been killed. Many people of Terrinoth find this a comforting hope, for surely his divine return would be a glorious event that heralds a new golden age. The Creation of the Orb of the Sky Timmorran had become ever increasingly obsessed in his ambition to preserve his power for future generations. His dream was to create a reservoir of magical power so potent that wizards who came after him would be able to use it to power countless spells. This magic would be relatively easy to work, and run less risk of inviting any Ynfernael corruption. He designed a powerful artifact, a huge crystalline sphere of pure magic to be called the Orb of the Sky, which would contain a portion of the Verto Magica’s energy. At the Tower of Meringyr, Timmorran and his acolytes strove to create the Orb, and he invested so much of his own energy into the artifact that he grew visibly infirm. In 513, Timmorran made a fleeting public appearance at a memorial service for King Daqan held at Archaut. The wizard’s emaciation was a source of shock to those present, and after he left, Waiqar worried aloud about the wizard’s frailty and the trouble it would cause if the Orb fell into the wrong hands. The Night of Betrayal The motives behind history’s most famous act of betrayal are known only to Waiqar Sumarion, though it is popularly supposed that he had been turned against Timmorran and civilized people while incarcerated and tortured in Llovar’s dungeons. There in the Black Citadel, a darkness that had grown in the depths must have sprouted into the full bloom of hatred and violence. Waiqar now gathered troops to his barony in Terrinoth, claiming that only he could be trusted with the power of the Orb. As twilight fell on a cool autumn day in 515, a legion led by Waiqar launched an assault on the Wizard’s Vale. His soldiers were well prepared to storm the keep, using an iron-bound ram to shatter the gates. They slew the guards and put Timmorran’s apprentices to the sword. As Waiqar and his warriors neared Timmorran’s workshop, the wizard realized his folly in making the Orb. He cast spells of unbinding and hurled the crystal sphere to the steel floor of the forge so powerfully that it shattered. Using magic, he channeled the myriad pieces into an enchanted velvet pouch. This he placed in the safekeeping of Lumii Tamar, foremost of the acolytes who studied at Meringyr. Timmorran had Lumii swear that he would distribute the fragments of the Orb throughout the world, entrusting each only to a being he deemed wise enough to use it. Through a quite unprecedented act of high magic, Lumii slipped past the terrible forces that laid waste to the Vale. All but a single fragment of the Orb went with him. Waiqar and his bodyguard burst into the workshop, and the vile baron was enraged to find that the Orb had been destroyed. Timmorran was exhausted from his efforts, and it was a simple matter for Waiqar to slay the defenseless wizard who was once his friend. Waiqar grasped the one piece of the Orb he could find, lifting it from the dead hands of the great wizard. He vowed to hunt down the remaining fragments, to take no rest until he possessed every last piece of the Orb. He swore that anyone who sought to deny him so much as the tiniest sliver would face his murderous wrath. Such was the dire weight of that oath, and perhaps so volatile were the magical energies that had been unleashed in the destruction of the Orb, that through his vow, Waiqar summoned into being a great tempest that lashed the Wizard’s Vale with a freezing and poisonous rain. The lives of those who stood within sight of Meringyr were snuffed out by the vow’s utterance. Yet the dead did not rest easy. Waiqar Sumarion, now Waiqar the Undying, left the Wizard’s Vale at the head of a fearful column of shambling corpses, the Deathborn Legion. Lumii Tamar Concocts a Plan Waiqar returned to his lands, referred to now as the Cursed Barony. The northwest of Terrinoth had always been a forbidding place of misty moorland and sucking slough. After the Night of Betrayal, though, it darkened even more, becoming continually shrouded in dense, dank fog through which sunlight would not penetrate. It took time for the news to reach the other barons. During the Council of 516, they struggled to piece together the rumors they had heard. They were troubled by reports of fearsome undead raiders that harried the lands around Waiqar’s barony, and they were concerned that messengers they had sent to contact Waiqar had not returned. As they conferred, a shrouded stranger arrived at Archaut, claiming to be a survivor of the slaughter in the Wizard’s Vale. As he bore nothing more offensive than a velvet pouch, he was permitted to address the Council, and so, Lumii Tamar was able to give his account of Waiqar’s betrayal. Incensed by this news, the young and impetuous Baron Irehythe seized the empty chair reserved for Waiqar at the Council table, intending to fling it from the hallway window. As he strained to lift the chair, he succumbed to a shrieking fit and fell to the floor, seized by searing pain and nightmarish visions before he passed away. He left no heirs and, as none of his subjects dared to brave a similar fate, his barony died with him. In the wake of the discussion and Irehythe’s tragic death, Tamar suggested that the fragments of the Orb he carried, which he referred to as the Stars of Timmorran, be kept secret and safe. The Council of Barons granted Lumii the authority to create and head an order of wizards tasked with protecting the Stars and advising on matters regarding them. Lumii, and the Stars, pass from history at this moment. Death Cults, a Hidden War The remaining Barons of Terrinoth prepared for war with Waiqar, mustering their forces in the lands around the mistwreathed barony. Waiqar, however, was cunning. Many of his opponents in this war forgot the martial skills he displayed while alive, concentrating only on his current unnatural abilities. He, too, had been gathering his forces, but he had also sent an agent to the Free City of Tamalir who would cause untold mischief. Certain rumors suggest that Zarihell had been liberated from the dungeons of the Black Citadel alongside Waiqar after the First Darkness, although no official records state such a thing. Most agree that she was an Elf of a mysterious lineage as well as surpassing persuasive ability, and that this no doubt contributed to the ease with which she spread Waiqar’s message. In Tamalir, she established the first of the Death Cults of Waiqar, which promised liberation both from corrupt baronial rule and, ultimately, from mortality itself. As the armies of Terrinoth closed in on Waiqar, the cult in Tamalir instigated a destructive riot in the city. The Barons of Terrinoth were now vexed. Should they continue to commit their military assets to containing and confronting Waiqar, or should they work instead to quell the unrest in Tamalir? Day after day, the Barons and their armies watched the borders of Waiqar’s land for signs of activity. And day after day, they received only new reports of chaos and murder in the Free City. In the early days of autumn, the Barons tired of watching nothing more than shifting banks of fog drifting from the sullen moors of Waiqar’s realm. They turned their armies around and marched toward Tamalir. The Scourge Waiqar seized the opportunity. His armies marched forth and laid waste to the surrounding regions, but unlike the rampaging hordes of the Uthuk Y’llan, he and his armies had a purpose. Waiqar did not simply wish to conquer and despoil; instead, he fixed on the goal of finding and acquiring the Stars of Timmorran. While his legions plundered towns and farmsteads for weapons and the fresh, raw materials for new undead soldiers, Waiqar directed them to take specific people prisoner, drag them back to his lands, and interrogate them for news of the Stars. By the time the Barons arrived at Tamalir, the death cult there had vanished. Waiqar’s agents had abandoned the city. They had begun to travel throughout Terrinoth, establishing new cells of the death cult wherever they came to rest. Now that Waiqar and his armies were on the move, the leaders of the cults kept in communication with the captains of the Deathborn Legion. In particular, Waiqar’s two chief lieutenants—Zarihell, who organized cult activity (though rumors have this as something she perhaps deigned to do more for her own benefit or amusement), and Ardus Ix’Erebus, who directed the movement of troops on the field—coordinated their efforts expertly. Between them, they ensured that every major action taken by the Deathborn Legion occurred in concert with riots in one or more of Terrinoth’s cities. The barons chased after Waiqar. Their combined forces might have been enough to shatter the Deathborn Legion, but Waiqar, still a superlative strategist, always managed to avoid conclusive engagements. Life in the cities became so perilous that citizens left them in droves, and a number of refugees soon set up a rough camp by the banks of the Flametail River. This position was advantageous, as it allowed supplies from Lorimor to easily reach the camp. Soon, the camp gained the name Dawnsmoor, perhaps as the refugees began to see some glimmer of hope for their future. Dawnsmoor became a bustling settlement, and its residents began raising permanent buildings among the tents and shacks. At the Battle of Ramscrossing, a force led by Baron Jerem Camford was ambushed by undead cavalry as Camford’s force negotiated a swollen river. The baron ordered a retreat back to his own lands, but a Deathborn force led by Ardus Ix’Erebus harried his forces so brutally that when they finally regrouped, they were in no state to defend their lands. The Deathborn Legion soon fell on the Barony of Camford in force. It was utterly ravaged, and the baron and his heirs were slaughtered. Waiqar came upon the knowledge that the Stars of Timmorran were in the keeping of the newly formed Lumii Order. He focused on Archaut, both as the capital of Terrinoth and also a likely location for the Order, but it was well defended and resistant to the influence of the death cults. Thus, Waiqar turned his attention to weakening the baronies through plunder and destruction, and for six years, the Deathborn Legion scourged the lands of Terrinoth. A Coalition Formed and Victory Won One spring morning, the growing settlement of Dawnsmoor was bathed in a bright sunshine of unseasonable intensity. A boat arrived at the makeshift harbor that had been dug into the riverbank, and a stranger walked onto the quay. He introduced himself as Kellos and claimed he was a holy man. He said that he had studied a magical tradition that had mastered fire and vitality, and he worked miracles of healing among the refugees of Dawnsmoor. Wherever there were enemies, the burning hand of Kellos was also there with righteous flames. Within weeks, Kellos was the central figure of a burgeoning cult. He had an eye for recognizing magical potential in his acolytes, and soon he was surrounded by a bevy of priests who could perform minor versions of his own miracles. In particular, many claimed Kellos himself had recovered from death. According to his followers, he was once struck down by an assassin’s blade and languished in death for days before arising again. After this tale became widespread, Kellos was spoken of not merely as a holy man, but as a divine being. Kellos was able to free the baronial forces from the need to guard the cities of Terrinoth. He and his priests concentrated on locating the ringleaders of the death cults and executing them. He also sent envoys to beseech the Latari Elves and Dunwarr Dwarves for assistance against Waiqar. Once more, the Elves and Dwarves mustered their own forces to aid Terrinoth. The combined might of the allied armies proved too much for the Deathborn Legion. Waiqar could not avoid open battle against so many foes, and while he could summon more Reanimates from the fallen warriors, he could not do so quickly without another Star to power his necromancy. Soon, the numbers of the Deathborn Legion dwindled, and in 521, they were forced to retreat back to the Cursed Barony. The allies celebrated victory over Waiqar. They sought to honor Kellos for his invaluable assistance, but the holy man had disappeared as mysteriously as he had arrived. According to his devout followers, he sought new foes to defeat and would gather new followers elsewhere to assist him in his noble endeavors. He still travels the world to this very day, it is said, and those in Vynelvale patiently await his eventual return to Terrinoth. References # Realms of Terrinoth Category:Era